Many Happy Returns
by shywr1ter
Summary: ML S1: A few moments on November 11th, post Female Trouble.


_**DISCLAIMER:** Still not mine; still no profit. I'll let you know if that changes._

**_A/N_**: _I tried like crazy to get this posted yesterday, on 11/11, but awoke this morning drooling into the keyboard before getting it done. I'm sure it's been done to death but being new to DA and posting, I just couldn't let Logan's birthday go by without acknowledging the day. Happy Birthday, Green Eyes. _

Fogle Towers: Morning.

...morning...without opening his eyes Logan felt his surroundings trickle in, start taking shape...

_Why could he trust the look he saw in her eyes when he was on his feet, but not from the chair? _

Logan awoke slowly, as he did these days after long hours, never-ending tension...physical effort and aching... disappointment...

_Disappointment?_ **_There's_** a term for it...

Logan lay awake, knowing he had enough ahead of him that day that he ought to get up and get moving; new files to evaluate and sources to call. Due to his lost time, chasing his own wild geese, he had three projects to juggle and a number of calls to return, soon...

_Did her eyes really change from one phase to the next, from feet to chair to feet, then back again? _

_Did **he**?_

Dr. Vertes had him believing he could walk again...walk, _still_...believing in the highs he'd felt when Max's blood had healed him and he could look her in the eye, look _down_ into her waiting face...it had him feeling... well, he'd told her too, hadn't he, his childish fantasy: he'd believed anything--no, "anything and everything" --was possible...

He sat, beginning the haul out of bed to start his day, as his days were now...as they would be, now, one after another... Another example of his pathetic, myopic optimism...believing that Val cared for him not once, but twice...believing his severed spinal cord would ignore medical reality and heal...believing that Max...

_Did the look in her eyes change, as he stood before her once again? Did she see him so differently?_

The look had changed, he knew, remembering with a sickening awareness: the wonder in her eyes, when he first stood before her, getting up from the chair when he first rose to gaze down in those eyes...

He moved his stiff, aching muscles to reach for the chair and pull out of bed. It was with those aches, the tiredness and ache and weariness that he remembered, on top of everything else...

November 11th. His first, in the chair. First of many, he snorted in bitter realization. And his body, the half he could still feel, felt as if it had been decades, not a year, since his last birthday. They'd been bad enough since his mother had died; at best, lonely...over time they'd been nothing to celebrate. Now... and so close to his willingness to give up birthdays altogether with his very life...he just wanted to get through. Maybe if he called Bling to cancel his session today. Maybe if he just didn't answer his calls...

...maybe if he could get through a day without seeing Max, maybe he could forget why it was all so hard...

He unlocked his brakes and started the familiar path to the kitchen to start his coffee, rehearsing excuses for Bling, for Max, why he was canceling therapy, why he couldn't make her dinner. And he'd almost made it all the way to the kitchen before he saw...

It was out of the corner of his eye, in the dimmed dining room, an unexpected floating spot of color, mid-air, causing him to pull back on his wheel rims and stare, the sight of a single, red balloon tied to a chair and almost bobbing a little taking him completely by surprise...

A smallish shape on the table then caught his eye and he turned more fully...slowly...and pushed toward the table, the slow dawning of understanding and poignant meaning drew him close and, almost in disbelief, he reached out gingerly to touch the precariously leaning miniature cake: two-layer chocolate, baked asymmetrically, iced lopsidedly, top layer threatening to slide off the bottom toward the table...he traced a cautious finger through the dark chocolate and raised it to stick it in his mouth, savoring the meaning even more than the sweet chocolate.

Maybe it _was_ him, he granted, leaning with a sudden, uncharacteristic playfulness to untie the balloon and find, after a little fumbling, a spot on the back of his chair where he could lace the shiny ribbon through and tie it on...maybe it really was that what changed her eyes was not whether or not he was standing as he met her gaze, but the gaze itself and his own eyes and words, to her...

He smiled, thoughts suddenly a million miles from his aches and excuses, remembering her chocolate eyes...the rich, deep brown of her hair... and the funny, touching, hopelessly gloriously lurching and lumpy chocolate cake...

...it might just be a happy birthday, after all...


End file.
